OK, this just made me giggle. Short story, 23 year old got drunk, had a knife, figured it'd be a good idea to break into a house and threaten the owner. Turns out the owner was 72. Oh, and a former boxer. The pictures tell the story of what happened. Damn kids get off my lawn!

As TPB blog confirms the sale, guess it's not a hoax. Sadly it really seems like they just sold out, though right in the blog post they say that if they mess with the site no one will keep using it. Just like suprnova of ages ago (anyone remember that one) maybe the age of The Pirate Bay will pass and a new main site will appear.

Needless to say, the comments on the blog entry are fairly, shall we say, "unsupportive" of the decision :)

With Firefox 3.5 just around the corner, Mashable has a Sneak Peek of What's On Tap for Firefox in 2010. The high points? Ubiquity built into the awesomebar, actual perceivable performance boosts, web application boosts, and more. Course, we'll never see these until things actually appear in 2010 or so ;)

Lifehacker talked to Mozilla, who Confirms Tuesday Release for Firefox 3.5. See link for some of the great new things in this release. I've been running it since it was in the early 3.1 beta stage with zero problems, looking forward to the final release.

I'm unsure as to whether Microsoft's strange new ads for Internet Explorer 8 are either a) brilliant and reminiscent of the old internal funny spoof ads with Bill Gates and friends or b) a pathetic reach to be quirky and relevant which instead comes off, well, pathetic. Glad Dean Cain found work though....

Just a note via Shacknews that Doom: Resurrection Hits the iPhone Today for $10. Bit steep price, and I'm hoping there's a free Lite version to check out. Still, very cool to see what high end dev shops can do with that little chunk of hardware.

HP Brings Classic Calculators to iPhone and Windows. It looks cool, that's for sure, but not sure if I would pay $15 or $30 just to have the same look as you had back in the day.... Course, if you're an accountant and your fingers only know how to work on the 12c Platinum financial calculator....

That's interesting... just saw on shacknews that id Software was Acquired by Bethesda Owner ZeniMax. This worries me a little, mostly just because I've never heard of the acquiring studio. However, they seem to be saying "it's fine, it's all fine, everything'll stay the same..." Who in the tech industry hasn't heard that before? Course, time will tell....

Bit of a puff piece on the Apple Blog about the Apple Retail Store Success. It brings up some excellent points, as someone who has been in an Apple Store and a Future Shop in the last 2 weeks or so, let me say that talking to the salespeople in the Future Shop/London Drugs/Best Buys of the world could be used as torture for enemy combatants.

"Tell us your invasion plans." "Never!" "Tell us now or we'll make you talk to a Best Buy salesman about wireless routers." "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!"

That said it's not all wine and roses in the Apple Store as they suggest, their main failing point (IMHO) is the people, not the knowledge or anything like that, but availability. I was in wondering why my laptop DVD drive was simply spitting out disks (duh, turned out it was busted) and had to beg and pull the "I drove in from way out in the Valley to Vancouver and I hardly ever make it out here!" and push out a couple of single, tiny tears to get slotted in to see someone at the "genius bar" when someone's scheduled 15 minute time was late. Also having to go through an orange shirted "concierge" person who (in this case) seemed completely elitist and condescending... "we'll have to see sir, our geniuses are very busy".

That said they did get me in, and did seem to take personal interest in making sure I did get helped, and the concierge did make sure I got things all set up when I was heading out the door.

Anyway, it's an interesting look at how Apple has made the retail experience a bit more appealing to the consumer.

Pretty great story about getting a stolen iPhone back from a thief, using the Find My iPhone service. The full story is here, and even if it is a publicity stunt by Apple (in this day and age of "social networking" and "new media" it wouldn't surprise me), it's still a great story. Best line of all is:

"We laughed triumphantly, adrenaline racing, feeling like the Jack Bauer trio. (Disregard the fact that we'd just left a Lego convention."

This is kinda cool, from Ars Technica: Microsoft announces free antivirus, limited public beta. Anti virus, malware, spyware, etc, all in one package from the OS creator. Kinda gives me a warm fuzzy in a way. I have some computer cleaning to do some time soon, and this could be a huge win.

A while back we heard that Opera was going to change the web with some special new feature. Looks like that feature has dropped, and it is Opera Unite.

The description is this:

Opera Unite is a unique technology that turns any computer or device running Opera into a Web server. In other words, your computer (running Opera Unite) is truly part of the fabric of the Web, rather than just interacting with it, and it’s something anyone can use.

Doesn't really say what it really is though. Basically the idea is fairly simple, code in the browser runs a small server, which then uses technologies like uPnP and DNS CNAME records to allow users at large to get right to your browser. So if you enable the 'music player' application the browser runs a little webserver that lists music on the computer (in a directory you point it to) and then points <yourusername>.operaunite.com/music to your routers external IP. Combine this with password protection and you can now listen to your music from work. Fairly simple, still fairly revolutionary.

Guess we'll see if it catches on (and if Opera's past has shown, this means "this feature will appear in Firefox 5.0 and IE 11 :)

Some more good analysis over here. Pay attention to the pictures illustrating how things all fit together.

Songbird, the Open Source Music Player for Mac/Windows/Linux has released version 1.20. New features include auto-organizing your library, itunes import/export, last.fm integration, and a new 10 band equalizer.

The last couple of Ubuntu releases have been.... well..... "evolutionary" (read: kinda boring). Looks like the next release, 9.10, Karmic Koala has some really neat stuff (other than the awesome codename). Pin Stack has a good list detailing the changes.

Here's your laugh for the day... check out Microsoft's Windows Internet Explorer 8: Get the facts comparison page. Don't you love mindless marketing propaganda. The only way that I can see these comparisions being complete and outright lies are some minor wordings put in the comments to explain how Chrome and Firefox don't have security, privacy, web tools, reliability (ha!) and manageability.

This reminds me of talking to someone who has just quit smoking and saying how wonderful they are now, ignoring the legacy of the 2 pack a day habit they left behind (in this case, we call it Internet Explorer 6, still a plague to the web). Ah well, I'm pretty sure that most people reading this site don't use IE8 for anything other than doing Windows Update on their parents and in-laws computers anyway....

Evernote for iPhone 3.0 is Here, and it's sexy. Lots of UI improvements, integrated maps, seems way less crashy and even a bit faster (though the taking a snapshot still seems to take forever). Big update though, a nice complement to the new iPhone OS 3.0 update :)

OSNews passes on the info that Linux will Be the First to Support USB 3.0. Yea, it's still a bit hacky to get it done, but it is cool that Linux is the first OS with USB 3.0 support (at least publicly, who knows what MS and Apple are doing behind closed doors).

It's not all wine and roses in the Apple World sadly. Seems that Apple is now warning about unsupported players' iTunes integration. This of course is referring to Palm emulating an iPod with their Pre. So far just an article on the support site, but I have no doubt that a minor iTunes update will come out soon to "address" these issues.

Well, still no OS update this morning, sounds like it'll be out sometime around 10-12 (or 5pm-7pm depending on who you listen to). In the mean time, you can How To Use The Best 40 Features of iPhone 3.0, so you at least know where to go for the new bits, instead of trying to find them all. IE: I didn't know shake to shuffle was a new feature.

CodeWeavers announced version 8 of their software for Linux and Mac. Crossover is software that allows you to run windows apps on non-windows platforms (if you didn't already know). The new version boasts a bunch of new apps available out of the box, plus lots of improvements in the ones there already (ie: office, outlook, IE7, etc).

Sadly I think the need for Crossover isn't nearly as great anymore. With things like Evolution's Exchange connector and OpenOffice.org out there for free, dealing with an emulation layer just isn't as imperative. Course, there are some apps that have nothing like them in the non-windows world that put Crossover in a good spot.

TweetDeck has recently released a .26.1 version, which includes, among other things, syncing your setup with the server, which also facilitates their new iPhone version, which you can sync your desktop setup down to the iphone. A neat card like (like the Palm Pre's UI) interface, which you can flip through nicely.

The only downside is a) I just bought Twittelator Pro and b) some of the input and message functions are different that I'm used to. Still a great app though.

Sorry for the lack of linkage all day, been out on the job hunt. Anyway, as mac fanboys and iPhone lovers know, tomorrow is iPhone OS 3.0 day. Looks like iPhone 3.0 Update for iPod Touch Page Appeared in iTunes, but then was quickly pulled. I believe things should all be up sometime tomorrow. Looking forward to the update myself, as long as I don't see any "3.0 nuked my phone" posts :)

Yes, it's YAMTFL (Yet Another Mac Theme For Linux), and no, it's not going to give you the "real" mac experience (which IMHO Is more about UI and consistency than wallpaper and icon themes. Still, if you want to check it out, Phoenix: Mac4Lin ver.1.0 has been released.

Well, there's only 50 sold out there (I kid, I kid), Evernote has created Evernote for the Palm Pre. I'm a big fan of Evernote, so this is good news. The software has the standard bits, image recognition, sexy interface, take a pic, use a pic, etc. It also has some nice pre-only extras, like 'recent notes' (wish the iPhone app had that) and viewing multiple notes at the same time (using the cool "card" system that the Pre uses).

If you haven't discovered evernote yet, I encourage you to check it out and sign up for the free version.

Looking for a easy URL to send people to like facebook.com/userfriendly ? Well, tonight at 9pm (your time zone) you can go to Facebook.com/Username and sign up for your own. Currently it's only a countdown though. See the facebook blog for some more details.

Catch it while it's hot.... some more Duke Nukem forever gameplay footage has surfaced. Via this story on Shacknews. The story has it's own video, but that appears to be unavailable, hence the link to youtube.

For the photography geeks out there, the Eye-Fi pro was just announced. The Eye-Fi is the funky little SD card that has wireless built in, and that can upload to flickr from public hotspots, etc. Ed at EZ studios blog notes that the new features in the 'pro' version give you wireless tethering in a card, something that is very cool for those wanting a cheap studio setup. A bit pricey for a 4G card at $149.99, but factoring in the benefits..... makes it more attractive.

The google mac team have released Google Quick Search Box. Looks like they are edging into the QuickSilver (not not in development anymore) and TaskBar (non-free).

This is interesting because while being an app launcher and app "do stuff with"-er (though doesn't seem quick as cool as launchbar or quicksilver in terms of chaining stuff together), is it is obviously a google search engine, and you can integrate search from your google or twitter accounts.

A bit of testing sees it as having very much potential. Intuitive if you're used to using QS or LB at all, feels a bit laggy compared to QS/LB, but having things like results popping right in (ie: put in "weather " and the first result is the current weather. Way cool.

Also according to the reddit article the development is done by the QuickSilver creator, Nicholas Jitkoff.

Sorry I was away all day folks, had a day of driving around... I did catch some of Apple's WWDC. Here's the wrap-up (for the 3 of you who haven't heard so far) and the highlights:

New MacBook Pro 13" model (cool if you want something more portable).

Snow Leopard will have better multi-core support, re-written 64bit finder, exchange support, lots of funky APIs, etc. So what? Oh, and the upgrade price will be $29. That's a bit of a big deal, when you're paying $399 for Vista Ultimate, and even when Apple folks are used to paying the Apple Tax of $129 for the OS/X upgrades. Course, $29 is the upgrade price too, I think the "full boxed" version is still $129 though. Coming September sometime.

So that's about the wrapup from the high level view, I think I got the major points. Honestly I'm not hugely impressed, as usual. Lots of new stuff, but nothing mindblowing. I guess every year can't be like the release of the original iPhone. I think most of my disappointment is that probably 90% of the new coolness of the iPhone 3Gs is in the software, which is available to all iPhones, and was shown off months ago.

As a counter point of course, Paul Thorrott (Windows guy, but someone who I respect a lot) has a reality check for the fanboys out there. Some of his points are very valid as usual, some seem a bit snarky and like a killjoy :) Still, a counter point that's needed.

Someone has gone out and compiled a list of the 25 Best Programmer WebComic Strips. Lots of XKCD and Dilbert in there. I've got about 1/3rd of them ready to be printed out and hung on the wall of my next office.

Aryk pointed me over to an article on the Good Experience blog. Entitled A hundred million mistakes, you can probably guess that their Bing impressions aren't all that great.

What's the world coming to, when Microsoft can't build a monopoly around a knockoff? It's those effing customers. They keep choosing the best experience.

I was accused recently of hating Microsoft ("hate" is such a strong word) and that I'd never give Bing a fair shake anyway (only partially true). I thought my article a bit ago was fairly fair and perhaps the cold hard truth.

The main gist of the linked article is twofold. First, why the hell is MS trying to compete in the search engine space. Google has it locked up, and lets be perfectly straight, Microsoft's core competency is not the web. They do great operating systems, office apps, and gaming systems. Seriously, I give them 100% honest kudos for those. Even I, a hard and fast Linux lover am excited about Windows 7. You don't need to rule every single market out there.

The second point is that instead of building something better and letting the customers come to it, MS is spending a hundred million dollars (that's $100,000,000, lots of zeros) to advertise it, and in essence, shove it down the consumers throats. In setting up a Windows 7 virtual machine with the new IE 8 the "recommended" settings are live search (which is now Bing of course).

I also was contacted by a company called M80 on behalf of Microsoft pointing me (and my readers) to a series of youtube videos called talking about windows which is blah blah windows marketing. I've also seen a lot more Microsoft-centric / loving / etc random articles just happening to pop up around the web.

I didn't know anything about this, but here are some details about the Astalavista.com hack, including details. More reason to a) secure your site and b) learn to use the tools that the blackhats use to ensure that you're secure. Fascinating read (the pastbin link is where you want to go for the good stuff).

Palm Central (so you know this might have a bit of a slant) has their Palm Pre Browser vs iPhone 3G, vs Android G1 Showdown. Sadly the speed tests are pretty unscientific. The browser does seem pretty sexy, I have to admit. I'd love to get a test version to play with and review (hint hint). The actual meat of it starts around 3:30 if you want to skip some of the fanboying at the start (though it's good to see what the browser is capable of.

Google's Page Speed Optimization Add-on has been released for Firefox. Sadly not compatible with 3.5b4. This looks similar to the one released from Yahoo a while back, called YSlow. It integrates with the Firebug tool to show you how your pages can be sped up.

CrunchPad: The Launch Prototype. This looks potentially awesome. If the 3d model graphics are accurate, it's a larger kindel, with full color, and a screen that goes almost all the way to the edge. Think Star Trek tech.

Course, there's tech demos and there's reality :)

The Video actually makes it look more like the mythical apple touchpad than a kindel.

Yea, the jokes just keep on coming and coming. You'd almost thought it was a pre-mature time for the Palm Pre-views to show up, but I guess since it'll be released this Saturday (anyone lining up?), it's good to get an idea of what the new handset is capable of. As usual, Engadget does a great job.

Of course, as I've found, use whatever you want, and it's not just the features sometimes that make an OS a winner, sometimes it's the "feel" of it.

That said, still an interesting look, especially some of the features I didn't know were in Windows 7. Also you're comparing an OS that isn't out yet to one over a year old (wonder what Snow Leopard news will come out next week also).

Well, WWDC is less than a week away, and the Apple rumor mill is in high gear. The Flickr set with the WWDC 2009 Banners ('One Year Later, Light-Years Ahead') is up, and the iPhone rumor roundup has been compiled.

So what do you think? Boring "meh" updates (we all know that iPhone OS 3.0 is going to be out RSN and that at least is going to be cool, based on the demo given early this year and the developer seed information that's been coming out), or will we be wowed? Is there going to be a new iPhone (all signs point to yes) and if so, will it be awesome, or just an evolutionary move up (bumped storage, processor, slightly different case) or will there be something "OMFG WTF WOW" to see. Will there be the oft-rumored tablet and changes / updates to the Macbook and Mac pro lines? Maybe just some more speed bumps. Biggest question though, will The Steve be onstage again?

From what I saw, and from the video on GeekBrief, it's a gaming system as close to Sci-Fi (or is it Skyfye?) as I've heard of before. Voice and face recognition, full motion capture to put you in the game, magic scanning of your stuff to use for skins in game, no controller needed (imagine the wii-mote without the wii-mote), in system video conferencing and data / info transfer... all magic.

Will it be able to be pulled off? Maybe. It has no price or release date, and a lot of the video looks more like a "this could be technology in this home of the future" type demo under optimal conditions. If anyone can do it, MS has the $$ though, so lets see what happens.

Aryk pointed to an article on Joystiq saying that there was a 2009 target date for Starcraft 2. Probably way more exciting if I was into Starcraft, or RTSs in general, but hey, I know some readers out there will get tight pants knowing that they could have SC2 in less than 6 months...

Slashdot has an article on Harsh Words From Google On Linux Development. I've been saying something like this for a while, that Linux's greatest asset (choice) is also it's greatest challenge (nothing is consistant / uniform).

Course, to be fair, the exemplar of the opposite of this, Apple, who has a consistent UI toolkit, HIG, etc, also is no closer to having a native Chrome browser running either :(

Well folks, the E3 season is upon us, so that means a lot of movie trailers and high hopes in the next few days. First up though, is Star Wars: The Old Republic (HD recommended viewing). OMFG this is a movie trailer for all intents and purposes. Of course the game isn't going to look like this (I don't think anyway, if it does I'm buying a new TV, console and sound system), and I hope that they haven't spent a year of game development time making the awesome trailer, but wow, this thing looks A-A-A-AWESOME. No, really, watch it.

Saw via Slashdot that Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension. Technically I'm sure it wasn't silent, and that somewhere buried in the small print it said it was going to do this, but still, that's no excuse. AVG does the same thing to show "safe links" in your google results, and I have the same opinion. Don't F-n do it. Or if you do, have it on a separate page of the install wizard, defaulting to no showing clearly what you're doing. Like Sun does for the google toolbar (or is it yahoo now?) when they do a java update. Well, without the default to No that is.

Bing is up and working this morning. It's a "preview" (guess that's equivalent to the google "beta" moniker), and unfortunately doesn't seem to have a lot of the cool functionality turned on (the image filtering, relevance/trust filters, flight filters, etc). I'm not sure why, and frankly I'm a bit worried that this will be seen as just a re-skin of Live search and completely ignored. I have some feelers out to figure out why this is.

Update: Sounds like you have to change your location to the US to get the good stuff. It's at the top right under More -> Preferences and the Location. Sadly this doesn't work for me :(